BY HARRY WEEKES
Winter, our winter, this winter, has become the new traffic. By which I mean winter is now the topic that consistently comes up every day. More specifically, snow. While I used to hear about traffic being backed up, I now hear about “no snow in the forecast.” Discussions of the new traffic pattern going into Ketchum have been replaced by wondering how some super storm can be moving through the Carolinas. Murmurings that traffic is down to one lane and it might not be possible to get north have been replaced by asking, “Can it even snow when it’s this cold?”
But all comments are not bleak. Hope invariably rears her head as people look to the other side. “When construction ends, getting to Ketchum will be easy.” “What if we have a February like we did that one year, where it just snowed and snowed?” And, “You know, there is a lot of winter left.”
For the record, I love snow. I want it to snow like that night in high school we watched “Moby Dick” at Melanie Hodge’s house and great flakes poured out of the sky until two and a half feet of the right white didn’t just carpet the Valley, it blanketed it, then put a comforter on top. Or like that year, when I first started teaching, where three Sundays in a row it snowed so much we had three consecutive Snow Days on each of those Mondays. Or snow like it did that Christmas we had the blackout and people cooked turkeys on gas grills.
And, for the record, if it is not obvious, I want people to pay attention to the natural world. I want them to take a moment, a minute, an afternoon, a weekend to simply marvel at all that is this planet. The male American kestrel sitting on the old utility pole by the side of the barn on Indian Creek Road, a sight so common in the summer, but this year on January 25? I want people to marvel at that bird. How the stars twinkle when it gets into the single digits, regardless of snow, when the air clears due to cold and you suddenly recognize that some of the celestial bodies sparkle blue and red and green? want people to stand and stare even as their tears freeze and their cheeks tingle with numbness. And what about the trees and bushes, the aspens and willows, that take on a dusty white? I want people to walk up, gently grab one of those branchlets, and realize that the mystery won’t be solved simply by getting closer.
In a winter like this one, I recognize something each of us humans shares—the desire to find a pattern. “Wasn’t it in the mid-’70s that there wasn’t any snow?” “I think it was 1996-97 that Baldy didn’t open until well into the New Year.” “Do you remember a winter like this one?”\
And, of course, the larger pattern is mostly obvious—we tend to pay attention to things when they negatively impact us. We no longer take for granted being able to cross-country ski on the bike path. Leaves left on a fall lawn are no longer hidden from view. Scraping ice and frost is a lot less fun than brushing powdery snow off the windshield.
Even though all is not white, winter still delivers plenty of wonder. I have no idea if the Barrow’s goldeneyes on Indian Creek Pond even care about snow; they frolic this year as much as ever. If the deer are nervous about being exposed, their galloping around the hills seems evidence to the contrary. And the skunks who disappear into their dens to wait out the storms? They appear content believing it has been snowing all year. What a dream that must be.
Harry Weekes is the founder and head of school at The Sage School in Hailey. This is his 54th year in the Wood River Valley, where he lives with Hilary and their two mini-Dachshunds. The baby members of their flock have now become adults; Georgia and Simon are fledging in North Carolina, and Penelope has recently changed roosting sites to Connecticut.
